


Cartography in Empty Spaces

by ignipes



Series: Cartography in Empty Spaces [2]
Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-07
Updated: 2007-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean has been gone for two years. On Christmas Day, an old friend brings him back to Sam's doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The clouds hung low and dark over the prairie, but it wasn't snowing yet. Sam pushed aside the gingham curtain on the back door and leaned against the frame, sipping his coffee and looking out over the field behind the house, past the row of leafless cottonwoods and through the distant barbed-wire fence. Winter had been slow and stubborn in coming this year; there were only a few patches of frost and windswept snow on the hard ground, barely covering the brown grass. The forecast had promised a white Christmas, but there was nothing yet except bitter morning wind.

Sam turned away from the window, let the curtain fall into place, and went into the kitchen. It was the only warm room in the house. He kept the furnace just high enough to prevent the pipes from freezing and most days didn't bother with the wood stove at all, but it was Christmas and the university was closed, so he was stuck here for the day. Might as well try not to freeze to death.

Or starve. He stepped over to the sink and ran hot water over last night's dishes, squirting soap over the mess and watching the bubbles rise with the steam.

Most of the meal was in the trash; he'd been halfway through cooking it when he realized that the thought of eating made him sick, and he'd stared at the pasta and sauce in the pot for a good ten minutes before he'd finally given up. That certainly hadn't helped later, when he'd been lying awake restless and nauseated and hungry, his mind spinning through a thousand miserable thoughts through the entire shitty night, but that was over now. The worst nights always passed, even Christmas Eve.

He was scrubbing spaghetti sauce out of a pan when the phone rang. Sam glanced at the clock: just after eight. Frowning, he dried his hands and wondered who would be calling this early, then shoved aside some papers and books on the table until he found his phone.

_Ellen_. Sam sighed and considered not answering, but even the ring of the phone seemed to be scolding him for being stupid, so he picked up.

"Hi, Ellen."

"Sam, honey, how are you doing?" Her voice was loud and familiar over the line, and in the background Sam could hear twangy, country Christmas music.

"I'm fine," Sam told her, with as much sincerity as he could muster. "Is everything okay?"

"Oh, we're fine," she said. There was the clatter of something metallic, and Ellen muttered a curse under her breath. "Or we will be once we put this goddamned turkey in its goddamned place."

Sam smiled to himself. Ellen was a woman of many enviable talents, but cooking was not one of them. "Why isn't Simon doing it? I thought the only reason you let Jo marry him was because he promised to do all the cooking."

"He's cooking alright," Ellen said, and Sam could practically hear her rolling her eyes. "Eight different appetizers, five side dishes, more desserts than you can shake a stick at -- guess the boy wasn't kidding when he said he knew a thing or two about food. I sure wish you'd reconsider," she added suddenly, her voice dropping a bit. "We've got enough food to feed an army, and you can get here in plenty of time. Folks have been asking after you, wondering what you're up to."

Sam closed his eyes briefly. "Thanks, Ellen, but..." He thought of the Christmas dinner at the roadhouse, decorated with tinsel and garland, echoing with laughter and music, filled with men and woman who had no other place to go but were happy to be there all the same. It was a good time, a good place to be. "I'd rather not," he said quietly. "I'm not really feeling up to a big crowd."

"Now, Sam," Ellen began, "I know you like that hermit lifestyle of yours, god knows why, but it is Christmas--"

"I know what day it is," Sam said angrily. "Do you think I could forget?"

There was a brief silence, then Ellen sighed. "No, Sam. I know it's a hard day for you."

Sam felt a pang of guilt for snapping at her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean--"

"It's okay, sweetie. We just worry about you when you're by yourself -- today more than usual."

"I'll be fine," he insisted. "I _am_ fine. I'm just -- look, I'll be there for New Year's, okay? I wouldn't miss that party for the world."

"Damn straight you won't," Ellen said. "Jo's threatening to drive on out and drag you back by your hair if you don't show up."

"I will. I promise."

"You take care of yourself, Sam," Ellen said. "If you need anything..."

"Thanks, Ellen."

When Sam hung up, the silence of the kitchen surrounded him like a stifling chill. He turned on the faucet again and hurried to switch on the radio, searching through the stations until he found the least annoying Christmas music.

Maybe he should have accepted Ellen's invitation, he thought. He picked up the sponge again and resumed scrubbing, staring idly through the rising steam out the window above the sink. She was probably right; it wasn't good for him to spend the day alone, this day of all days, and there were worse ways to deal than with food and alcohol and too-loud music and too-noisy laughter, but...

But it still hit him at the oddest moments, unexpectedly even though he'd trained himself to expect them. He would glimpse a half-familiar figure from the corner of his eye, inhale a whiff of Ivory soap and leather and gunpowder, catch himself humming along to some ridiculous hair metal power ballad on the radio, wake up from a nightmare of fire and screams convinced he wasn't alone in the room, hear a lame, immature joke and think, _I'll have to tell Dean that when he--_

It passed. It didn't get any easier, but it passed.

Sam rinsed the dishes and turned off the water, opened the fridge and stared into it for a few minutes. The coffee felt sour in his stomach and he knew he needed to eat, but the pickings were pretty slim.

"Waffles," he said aloud. If he couldn't be enthusiastic about food at least he could be decisive.

Something bumped against his leg, and Sam glanced down to see Daisy winding around his ankles. "So, you decided to show yourself today?" he asked. She blinked her bright blue eyes at him. "How do waffles sound?"

Instead of replying, Daisy jumped onto the kitchen table and settled onto one of his books, trapping a pen beneath her paws and curling her tail around an empty mug.

"Okay," he said, "that works. You do the reading, I'll do the cooking."

Talk to the cat, he thought. Find a bowl. Find the waffle iron. Find the mix. Find the milk and eggs. One step at a time, he told himself firmly, don't need anything else in your mind, don't think about the next until this one is done, and without much thinking at all the pleasant smell of cooking batter was filling the kitchen and his stomach was grumbling in anticipation.

He sat down at the table with his plate in one hand and a fork in the other, staring at Daisy staring at him while he ate, and he cleaned up this new mess of dishes until the kitchen was spotless. He scooped Daisy off the table and plopped her onto the floor, gathered his books and carried them into the living room. He built a fire in the fireplace and sat back on his heels while the kindling caught, and when he glanced out the window he saw that it had finally started to snow.

Someday, he thought, someday he'd be able to get through Christmas without this much effort, without grasping for meaningless items and actions and landmarks to fill the empty places where something else should be -- where _Dean_ should be. You could remove _brother_ and _family_ and _best friend_, scratch him off your life like a continent erased from a map of the world, the safe and familiar landscape replaced with blank spots and _here be monsters_, but you couldn't remove everything that surrounded him, couldn't ignore that roads that once led home had become dead-ends. You could never erase all of that.

Sam sat down on the sofa and opened one of his books. The words swam before him, unintelligible nonsense, and he closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, tried not to think.

And someday, maybe ten or twenty years down the road, he wouldn't feel so sick and guilty and disgusted with himself for wanting to forget.

He read for a while, getting up occasionally to feed the fire or pour more coffee, knowing that he'd likely have to read it all again in a few days. Outside the snow and wind picked up, and on the radio the DJ was talking about a blizzard warning in effect for most of Nebraska.

The clock on the mantle was chiming ten and Sam was setting another log on the fire when he heard the crunch of wheels on gravel outside, somewhat muffled by the thin layer of snow over the driveway. Surprised, he went over to the window and glanced out.

It was a beat up old Jeep Cherokee, mud-splattered brown with tinted windows and a crooked bumper. Sam frowned, trying to remember where he'd seen it before. The car stopped just outside the door and the driver's door swung open.

The driver was wearing a heavy winter coat with a hood, but when she climbed out Sam recognized her immediately.

He hurried to the front door and yanked it open. "Lenore?" He didn't bother to hide the surprise and suspicion in his voice. "What are you doing here?"

She pushed her hood back and looked up at him; snowflakes speckled her dark hair and her skin looked almost gray in the winter light. "Hello, Sam," she said. "Interesting place you have here. I never took you for the farmer type."

"I'm house-sitting for a professor on sabbatical." Sam waved his hand dismissively and asked again, "Seriously, what are you doing here? How did you find me?" He looked past her toward the Jeep; he could see the silhouette of another person in the car, in the passenger seat. "Is that Ted? What's going on?"

"No." She glanced over her shoulder, and when she looked back at Sam, there was a strange, bemused smile on her face. "That's Dean. Your brother."

Sam stared at her. "Dean's dead."

"He's not, Sam. He's here, and--"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Sam stepped toward her, his heart racing and his hands instinctively clenching into fists. "He's dead. I _saw_ him die, Lenore. I fucking _watched_ \-- I don't know what the hell you're doing, but this isn't--"

"Sam," she interrupted, "shut up and listen to me for a second, okay? I'll explain everything, but first -- just come and see."

Without waiting for him to reply, she turned and walked back to the Jeep, rounding to the passenger side and opening the door. She looked up and met Sam's eyes over the top of the car.

Impossible. It was impossible, but his feet were moving down the steps without his permission. Dean's dead. Gone. His throat tightened painfully and his heart was thudding like a drum in his chest. Two years ago last night. Burning building, rotten floor, broken neck. Just out of reach, Sam had heard the floorboards crack over the roar of the fire, turned around just in time to see Dean's arms flung wide, his mouth opened in a startled shout, and he was gone.

"It can't be," he said, brushing his hand over the hood of the Jeep as he walked toward Lenore. "He's -- oh, _god_."

He was asleep or unconscious, slumped bonelessly in the passenger seat, covered by a thin blanket. His skin was pale, nearly as pale as Lenore, and his arms and neck were slashed with dozens of small cuts and scars, some old and healed, others fresh and broken open, seeping blood. There were dark circles under his eyes and bruises on his face, his hair was too long and he hadn't shaved in days, but it was Dean. Even with his mind screaming _it's not possible!_ Sam knew.

"What -- where -- how did you..." Sam reached out hesitantly, brushed his fingers over the blanket, pulled his hand back. His voice was a croak, barely intelligible, and Sam forced himself to look away from Dean long enough to ask Lenore, "What happened? Where has he been? Are you sure it's--"

"I'll tell you," she said, "but I think you should get him inside. He's drugged and in pretty bad shape, and it's cold--"

Something clicked in Sam's mind. He looked from Lenore to Dean and back, his hand gripping the top of the Jeep's door painfully. Pale and unconscious, cut up and bleeding, so fucking pale--

Sam spun quickly, grabbed the front of Lenore's coat, and slammed her against the Jeep. "Drugged? What the fuck did you do to him?" he growled. "You and your friends? What the hell--"

"Sam!" Lenore's eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed again as understanding dawned. "He's not a vampire. He's alive. We didn't do anything -- just found him. I swear, Sam, we didn't touch him. He's still alive, still human."

When Sam didn't answer, she jerked her head toward Dean. "Check his pulse if you don't believe me. Check him with dead man's blood, holy water, whatever else you can think of. He's only human. He's badly hurt," she said, "but he _is_ your brother. I can -- you _know_ that we never forget a scent, Sam. This is Dean."

Sam released her, took him a deep breath and realized that his hands were trembling. "He died," he said, leaning in to the car to look at Dean more closely. With one shaking hand he felt for a pulse on Dean's neck; it was weak but steady and unmistakable, and beneath the thin blanket and white t-shirt his chest was rising and falling with each breath. Sam's voice dropped to a whisper: "You died."

"Bring him inside," Lenore said, touching Sam's arm softly. "It's cold out here, and this is going to take a while to explain."

Sam nodded and, after a moment's hesitation, undid the seatbelt fastened around Dean. He slipped his arms under Dean's knees and shoulders. Dean was so fucking light, thin like he hadn't had a decent meal in ages, and Sam maneuvered him awkwardly out of the Jeep before hurrying toward the house. Behind him Lenore slammed the car door and followed.

Inside, he carried Dean straight to the living room and laid him on the couch, covered him with a heavy quilt and threw a couple more logs in the fire. Lenore disappeared into the kitchen briefly, and she returned with a towel dampened with warm water. Sam took it from her and sat on the coffee table by the sofa, shoving his books and notes aside, and began to clean the cuts on Dean's arms with shaking hands.

"Tell me what happened."

Lenore didn't answer immediately. She paced around the room twice, looking at the professor's photographs on the mantle and walls, picking up knickknacks and setting them down, and Sam's heart was still pounding painfully.

"Lenore?" He was struggling to keep his voice calm, resisting the urge to grab her again and shake her until she explained everything. "Tell me what happened!"

It's a trap, he thought, straightening up and watching her closely. A trap, a trick, a lie -- the dead don't come back, not in any good way, and Dean is dead and gone and this isn't him, this can't be--

But -- _maybe_. Sam tried to ignore the flickering of hope in his mind and told himself he had to be rational.

"We were down in Terre Haute," Lenore said. She shrugged off her coat and draped it over the back of the armchair, then sat down heavily. She looked exhausted, and Sam wondered what could have happened to make a vampire so tired. "Just for a few months, you know how it is."

"We were in Effingham when he..." Died, disappeared, Sam didn't even know what to call it now. He concentrated on wiping the dried blood from Dean's skin. Some of the cuts were quite fresh, and he tried to remember just what he had in his first aid kit. It had been a while since he'd stocked it. There were bandages, at least, and some painkillers, though he knew he couldn't give Dean anything until he woke up. "That's not far from Terre Haute."

"I know," Lenore said. "A few weeks ago, we heard about a couple of kids, teenage boys, who had disappeared about six months ago. Their bodies were found about fifty miles from where they vanished, completely exsanguinated."

"Other vampires?" Sam asked. Under the series of small cuts and bruises, on Dean's right forearm he found a familiar old scar, the one he'd gotten when he was twelve and fell out of a tree in Pastor Jim's backyard. Tracing the scar with his index finger, Sam felt tears spring into his eyes and a knot form in his chest.

"That's what we thought at first," Lenore replied with a tiny smile. Sam had never really understood the relationship between her peaceful family of vampires and the less humanitarian sort, but he'd always assumed it wasn't a friendly one. "Stirring up trouble on our turf, drawing attention to themselves. We don't approve of that degree of recklessness, so we decided to look into it. It wasn't easy, to be honest. They were careful about covering their tracks--"

Growing impatient with her calm story, Sam interrupted, "Who was careful? Where did you find him? What are you--"

"I'm getting to it, Sam."

"You said he was drugged--"

"He was, but I don't know what they used," Lenore said quickly before Sam could ask. "He woke up briefly a couple hours ago, but..."

"But?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, Sam. He was very confused, and he passed out again almost immediately."

Sam felt a shiver of fear. "Confused how?"

"Let me tell you how we found him, Sam," she said. "It will make more sense that way."

Meeting her eyes across the room, Sam nodded.

"We eventually discovered there was a connection between the deaths and a man who called himself Father Enoch," Lenore explained. "He owned a large farm outside Terre Haute, and he lived there with quite a few people -- several women he called wives, dozens of children, and many who were just... followers."

"A cult?" Sam asked, frowning. "This Father Enoch is a cult leader?"

"Yes," Lenore said, "but Father Enoch has more going for him than charisma and devoted followers."

Sam sat back and turned toward Lenore, pit of worry in his gut growing. "What do you mean?"

"He has psychic powers," she said. "He's able to influence people's minds, to make them believe what he wants them to believe." Sam nodded; as far as psychic powers went that one wasn't too strange, and it certainly wasn't unusual for cults. "I don't know how many of his followers he was able to control at once, but--"

"Is that what happened?" Sam asked incredulously. "Is that where Dean has been? Brainwashed by some fucking _cult_?"

"Not exactly." It almost sounded like an apology. "The cult, they called themselves 'Brethren of the Wine of Eternal Life.'" She smiled ruefully and shook her head. "They had no idea what they were asking for. It is ironic, though, that we were the ones who stopped them."

It took a few seconds for the pieces to fall into place. Wine of Eternal Life. Bodies found drained of blood. Dean drugged and cut up and starved.

Sam stood so quickly he knocked the coffee table back a few inches. "Blood? They were taking _blood_?"

"Father Enoch and his followers were convinced that blood would make them immortal, but of course they couldn't use their own, so they took other people's, people they kept captive at their farm."

"But..." Sam twisted the damp towel in his hands, then threw it aside angrily and scrubbed his hands through his hair. "He was gone for _two years_," he said. He knew he was shouting, but he couldn't stop himself. "Two fucking years! Are you telling me they had him for _two years_, drugging him and mind-controlling him and _bleeding_ him for some... some... some crazy _belief_, they were just using him and -- and I didn't even -- he was _dead_, I saw, I saw him die, he was dead..."

Sam stuttered over the words, choked with shock and fury, clenching his hands into tight fists and fighting the overwhelming desire to start hitting something, _anything_, whatever it took to make Lenore tell him that no, it wasn't like that at all, it wasn't two years of imprisonment and torture while Sam went moved on with his life, never even bothering to suspect that he might had been wrong, that Dean might be out there somewhere needing his help, waiting for rescue.

But Lenore only said, "I'm so sorry."

"I thought he was dead." He turned away from Dean, so pale and still under the colorful quilt, and leaned against he fireplace mantle, letting the sharp edge of the brick bite into his palms. "I saw him fall, I saw his body burning..."

"I don't know for sure, Sam, but I think that's how the cult finds its captives. It was probably a trap. What were you doing in Effingham?"

Sam tried to remember the details that he'd struggled to forget for so long. "We were investigating a disappearance," he said. "Mom, dad, three kids." Entire family gone, nobody knew where, no sign of foul play. They'd probably upped and joined Father Enoch's cult, maybe by choice, maybe not, but a man who used psychic powers to influence his followers wouldn't want supernatural hunters sniffing on his trail.

"But there was a body," he told Lenore. "I wouldn't have -- there was a body. With Dean's ring and amulet and... and a broken neck."

Dean had fallen and Sam had tried to race down to help him, shouting and panicking while smoke filled his lungs, but the house was falling to pieces and he was lost, confused, couldn't even find his way to the right floor, two stories down where he knew Dean was lying. It was a blur in his memory: he remembered noticing that his jacket was on fire, remembered breaking glass and cutting himself as he scrambled out, remembered the shockingly cold night air, remembered screaming and fighting when strong hands kept him from charging back into the burning house.

The firemen found one body. Broken neck; they said he died the moment he hit the floor, even though it was only about twenty-five feet. It was better that way, they said, at least he hadn't suffered. There was nothing left except ashes and bone, Dean's silver ring and his indestructible amulet, and an official report chalking it up to a case of bad wiring and worse luck.

"Somebody else's," Lenore said. She sounded confident, like she had it all figured out already. Even though he'd known her for five years, it was easy for Sam to forget that Lenore was nearly two hundred years old and had been making plans and schemes for most of that time. He didn't look around, but he heard her stand and walk toward him. "Somebody they bled too much, most likely, like the boys that were found last month. They were probably hoping to trap both of you, but when you didn't fall they had to make do with what they could. That's how they worked, Sam."

"How do you know?"

"There were about ten other captives, besides Dean," she explained, "and Ted dropped them off at the hospital. We didn't hang around, but we heard on the news that a couple of them had been identified as people reported dead months and years ago." Lenore tilted her head to one side and idly began to straighten the picture frames on the mantle. "It's easy to steal someone if everybody else thinks he's dead."

Sam let the story sink in, trying to wrap his mind around what it meant. "But I didn't even... _god_. I was so sure. I burned the bones..." He had taken the bones to the clearing where they'd burned their father, built a fire large enough to singe his skin and blot out the star-filled sky, and he'd watched it burn until he couldn't stand upright anymore, until he'd fallen to the ground and sobbed into the muddy snow until Bobby found him in the morning, hauled him up by his shoulders and gruffly told him to get inside before he froze solid. "I was so sure," Sam said again.

"You couldn't have known he was still alive."

"I _should_ have known. I should have -- I should have done _something_."

"Sam."

He shook his head and brushed her hand from his shoulder, wiped his eyes and cleared his throat. "You keep saying 'that's how they worked', 'that's what he did'. Past tense. What happened to them?"

"We gave most of the followers a choice," she said.

Sam looked at her steadily, and she gazed back without a hint of remorse.

"And the rest?" he asked. "What about the leader?"

Lenore shook her head. "We don't know. Some of them got away."

"How? Where did they go?"

"I don't know," she repeated. "There were only four of us and more than sixty of them."

"Well, are you following them? You can track them, right?"

"Sam, we couldn't stay. That's not what we--" Lenore broke off at a small noise behind them.

They both spun around. Dean was groaning quietly and pushing the blanket down.

Sam hurried over to him, nearly tripping over the coffee table in his rush. "Hey. Hey, Dean, are you awake?"

Dean's eyes fluttered open and he looked around groggily.

"Dean?"

He focused on Sam and struggled to sit upright, his eyes widening in alarm. "What's -- where am I?" His voice sounded rough, as though he hadn't used it in a long time, and his fear was unmistakable.

"You're safe, Dean." Sam reached out to help him sit up, but Dean flinched away violently, pressing himself into the cushions of the couch and drawing his knees up to his chest. "Dean, you're safe," Sam repeated, keeping his voice low and soft. "Nobody's going to hurt you now. Do you remember what happened?"

Dean licked his lips nervously. "Do I -- you... Who are you?"

"Dean, what are you--" Sam suddenly felt as though he was forcing the words out through a vise tightening around his throat. "It's me, Sam. Your brother. I'm your brother -- don't you remember?"

"I don't -- I can't -- know..." Dean looked around wildly, his gaze terrified but alert. "Sister Emmanueline?"

"Dead," Lenore said. "She's dead."

Dean snapped his head up to look at her. "You... was it... you killed her? She came to -- and you were there..."

Lenore nodded. "Yes. I did."

"And... Father Enoch? The -- the rest of them?"

"They won't hurt you anymore," Sam said. And even though it was a lie, he added, "They're gone. All of them."

Dean stared at Lenore for a few seconds, then he looked back at Sam.

"Good," he said. There was barely a flicker of recognition, no real sign that he saw Sam as anything but a stranger, but his shoulders relaxed and the brief look of grim satisfaction on his face was pure Dean. "I hope they suff--"

He stopped abruptly and clapped his hand over his mouth, like a small child caught saying a cuss word. He ducked his head and wrapped his other arm around his knees, glancing at Sam and Lenore warily from under the fringe of his uncut hair.

"Yeah," Sam sighed, at a loss for what to say next. He looked up at Lenore, but she only shrugged, clearly as disturbed by Dean's behavior as he was. "I hope they suffered too."


	2. Chapter 2

His hand was shaking so badly that water sloshed out of the mug and dripped down the kitchen cabinet.

"Was it the drugs?" Sam asked, drying his hand absently on his jeans. "Whatever they gave him -- did it fuck with his mind?"

"I don't know." Lenore spoke quietly, watching Dean through the kitchen door with a thoughtful expression. "It could be -- well, he's terrified," she said, "and when somebody is held captive for so long..."

Her voice trailed off, and Sam didn't ask her to explain. He knew that Lenore hadn't always been one of the good vampires, but he also knew that the less good kind rarely paid attention to the psychological state of their meals.

"I don't know what to do," he admitted, running his hand through his hair. "What if he doesn't--" Through the door, he could see Dean sitting on the sofa, his knees still drawn up and the quilt pulled over him. As Sam watched, Daisy jumped onto the back of the couch and Dean started, leaning away from her in alarm. Sam's stomach felt as though it was tied in knots, queasy and bitter. "He doesn't know who I am -- who _he_ is, damn it, and I don't know how to... I don't know what to do."

"Sam." Lenore walked over to him, put a hand on each of his arms and looked up to catch his eyes. "Why don't you start by taking care of him? He's probably hungry and cold, he needs some bandages and clean clothes, and..." She shrugged, patting his arm comfortingly. "He'll remember. He's still your brother, even if he doesn't know it right now."

"How can you be sure?"

"Because I'm two hundred years old and much, much smarter than you," Lenore answered, smiling gently. "He's _alive_, Sam. He's alive, and you can help him remember."

Sam stared at her for several seconds, until the panic lessened, and in its place -- cautiously, warily -- he felt a small glow of hope. "Yeah," he said, nodding and sniffling, pushing his hair back from his face. "Yeah. He's alive. That's -- _god_, he's alive, and we can... I can... I know a doctor I can call, somebody I can trust, maybe she can figure out what they gave him and..." The words caught in his throat and Sam exhaled shakily. "I can't believe he's alive."

"You'll get used to it," Lenore said. Then her smiled faded and she stepped back, looking into the living room again. "We had to leave Terre Haute as quickly as possible, before the police began to investigate. We have to find someplace else to stay for a while."

"I know. I understand. Are you leaving?" He didn't expect her to stay. She never lingered, none of the times they met up over the years. Sam glanced out the window; the blizzard was growing stronger by the minute, wind howling around the house and snow obscuring the trees at the end of the property. "It's pretty bad out there -- you can wait until morning."

"I'll be fine," she assured him. She hesitated, as though deciding whether or not to go on, then said, "I can't make any promises, but if we hear anything about Father Enoch and the rest of his followers..."

"Thank you," Sam said. "Thank you for -- for bringing Dean to me, for everything."

He followed her into the living room, still carrying the mug of water for Dean. Lenore put on her coat and smiled at them before opening the door. "Take care, both of you," she said. Freezing wind whirled into the house as she went outside, then the door slammed shut and a few moments later he heard the rattle of the Jeep's engine.

When she was gone, there was no sound except for the howling wind and the fire crackling on the hearth. Dean was watching him with wide, frightened eyes, and Sam felt a ridiculous surge of nervousness as he scrambled for something to say. It was so stupid, so stupid for _him_ to be scared. This was Dean, his brother, the one person he knew better than anybody in the world, the person who knew him better than anybody.

But it wasn't, not really. Maybe Dean was still in there, lost behind drugs and mind-control and two years of evil, but the pale, thin, shivering man before him was somebody else, unknown and uncharted territory, and Sam had no idea how to go about finding his brother in all of that.

Sam moved forward slowly, holding out the mug. "Here's some water," he said. Dean's lips were chapped and he kept swallowing. Sam wondered how long he'd been unconscious. "You must be thirsty."

Dean took the mug from him and looked into it suspiciously.

"There's nothing in it -- it's just water," Sam said. "I promise, it's just water."

Dean didn't respond. Daisy was curled up beside him on the couch, so Sam sat on the coffee table again and rested his elbows on his knees. He tried to order his thoughts and force the thousand things running through his mind into some kind of sense. Start at the beginning, he decided. Put himself in Dean's place and figure out what would reassure him and gain his trust.

"I'm your brother, Dean. I'm Sam, your kid brother." He watched carefully, but Dean listened with no obvious reaction. "You've been gone for two years. I thought you were dead, but... but I was wrong, I was wrong and those people had you and I'm--" So, so sorry I didn't know, so sorry I gave up on you -- but Sam stopped himself before he said it out loud. "You remember that part, don't you? You remember the people who had you?"

After a long silence, Dean nodded. He looked down at his arms and rubbed the cuts and bruises idly, and he muttered, "Wine for sacrifice, blood for everlasting life. The higher purpose."

There was something about the way he said it, about the way he glanced up at Sam quickly as he spoke. He didn't sound like a brainwashed automaton reciting what they'd told him. He sounded -- scared, small, suspicious, yes, but there was something else -- there was _anger_.

"They're gone," Sam told him, when Dean said nothing more. "They won't hurt you anymore. " And if they try, he added silently, I'll rip their fucking arms off and feed them to coyotes -- for starters. "But, Dean, this is important -- do you know what they gave you? Do you know what they used to drug you?"

Dean shook his head. "It... it was in the food."

Of course. Of course it was in the food, best way to make sure the captives couldn't avoid it, give them the choice of being drugged or being starved.

"Okay," Sam said, quashing his anger and keeping his voice calm. "Okay. Look, I have a friend who can help -- she's a doctor, and she might know what to do." He stood and started toward the kitchen. "I'll call her, see if she has any ideas--"

"I don't--"

Sam stopped short and turned around. "Yeah?"

"You say you're -- my brother?" Dean sounded so hesitant, like he wasn't sure he had heard Sam correctly, or he didn't think he was allowed to be speaking.

"Yeah, I am."

"I don't... think I remember you…" He was uncertain even about that.

"I know you don't," Sam said. "I know -- wait. I have an idea. I can show you something."

Sam went into the kitchen, but instead of his phone he found his laptop and brought it back to the couch. He switched it on and clicked through several folders, looking for files he hadn't opened in over a year but had kept carefully backed-up all the same.

"Here. Look at this." He turned the laptop so Dean could see it, wincing inwardly when Dean flinched away from the sudden movement. "That's us."

It was a picture from three years before. The photo was slightly blurred -- Jo had been a little unsteady on her feet when she took it -- but it was clear enough. He and Dean were leaning against the roadhouse bar, arms draped over each other's shoulders and big, drunken smiles on their faces. It had been a fun night, full of silly dares and even sillier karaoke, one of those rare occasions they had been surrounded by people they knew in a place that was familiar.

Dean stared at the picture, then looked at Sam.

"That was a year before you -- before you disappeared," Sam told him. "At a friend's New Year's party."

Dean looked back at the picture, reaching up to touch his own unshaven face and the ends of his hair. "Oh," he said, uncomprehending.

With a sigh, Sam closed the laptop and set it aside. "I know. You don't -- yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I... Okay. I'll go call Sangeeta. Just... wait here a second," he finished stupidly, going into the kitchen again.

He found his phone and scrolled through the names, hitting _call_ when he found the right one. It rang three times before somebody picked up and rattled off a greeting in a language Sam didn't recognize.

"I, uh..." He glanced at the number the phone had dialed. "May I speak to Sangeeta, please?"

"Oh!" The voice on the other end said something else that Sam didn't understand, then split Sam's ear with a shout for Sangeeta.

Several seconds passed, filled with the racket of people laughing and talking in the background, before she came on the line. "Hello?"

"Sangeeta, this is Sam."

"Sam! How are you doing?"

"I... it's kind of a long story," he said. "I need a favor."

She spoke to somebody else, then said to Sam, "Sorry, it's crazy here today. What is it?"

"It's -- oh." Sam closed his eyes briefly. "It's Christmas. I'm sorry. I forgot."

"You forgot it was Christmas?" There was another outburst of laughter from Sangeeta's end of the line, but it was cut off by what sounded like the closing of a door. "Okay, now I can hear you. I'm in Noah's closet, by the way. It's the only place in the house not overrun with relatives. What's going on? You sound upset."

"I need your medical expertise," he explained.

"In the middle of Christmas dinner? Are you hurt?"

"No, not me," he told her quickly. "I need -- look, do you know of any drug that could make somebody calm down, act docile, not fight, maybe act as a sedative. It might cause amnesia too, but I'm not sure..." He trailed off, glancing through the door into the living room. Dean was still sitting on the couch, scratching Daisy behind the ears. He seemed to feel Sam's eyes on him and looked up, withdrew his hand from the cat and tucked it under the blanket.

"That's a hell of an order," Sangeeta said after a moment. "What on earth do you need to know that for?"

"It's hard to explain." He hesitated, still watching Dean through the doorway. He trusted Sangeeta, and if she was going to help him she need to know what was going on, but it was difficult to say it out loud. _Dean's here, Dean's alive, he needs help_. It felt too fragile, too uncertain to say aloud, but he swallowed and took a deep breath.

"It's Dean," he said. "My brother Dean. He's here. He's alive. He's hurt -- these people had him -- I don't know what they did, except I do know they drugged him and he can't remember anything and--"

"Whoa, _whoa_, Sam, slow down." Sangeeta spoke over him, raising her voice slightly, and waited for him to stop. "Start at the beginning. Your brother? The one who's been dead for two years?"

"He wasn't dead," Sam said.

Taking a deep breath, he told her what had happened. She listened attentively, and Sam left out only the minor detail that the friend who'd found Dean was a vampire.

"Sam," she said softly when he was done, "how can you be sure it's him? This wouldn't be the first time something evil tried to use him against you."

He stepped away from the doorway and leaned against the refrigerator. "I know. I just know, okay? It's Dean. And he's -- Sangeeta, he's in really bad shape."

"All right," she said. "Is he hurt? Conscious?"

She switched to her 'doctor voice,' and began asking Sam detailed questions about Dean's condition. Sam answered as best he could, growing increasingly nervous with each question. He paced the kitchen as they talked, looking through the doorway every couple of steps, afraid to let Dean out of his sight for more than a few moments.

Finally, Sangeeta said soothingly, "Sam, calm down. It doesn't sound like he's in immediate danger. Get him cleaned up, get him to eat some food, drink some water. Let him do it himself if he can. The amnesia..." She paused, thinking. "That could be any number of things. It could be a side effect of whatever drug they gave him, or it could be from severe psychological or physical trauma. Or all of them."

"Will it--"

"I don't know," Sangeeta said. "Most amnesia is temporary, but without knowing what they gave him and what else happened..."

"Okay," Sam said, letting out a slow breath. "I get it."

"Talk to him," she advised, "and make him talk to you, if you can. Get him to tell you what he does remember, and you'll have a better idea how to start filling in the blanks." She paused, then added, "You're only going to ignore me if I tell you to take him to a hospital, aren't you?"

Sam smiled slightly. "Yeah. I am. He's been gone for two years, and..." And the thought of turning Dean over into stranger's hands again so soon was more than he wanted to consider.

"Stupid stubborn hunters," Sangeeta muttered, and she sighed. "Do you want me to come over?"

Sam protested that the blizzard was too dangerous for house-calls, and Sangeeta promised to stop by the next day, sounding somewhat glad of a reason to escape the house, and they hung up. Tossing the phone from one hand to another, Sam went back into the living room.

Dean was still sitting on the sofa; he hadn't moved an inch.

"This is the longest I've ever seen you sit still in your entire life," Sam said, but as soon as the words were out he felt like an idiot for saying it. He turned around and knelt by the fireplace, busying himself with putting another log on. "Are you hungry? I can make something to eat while you -- while you get cleaned up." He stood up and took a hesitant step toward Dean. The clothes Dean was wearing were filthy and worn, a white t-shirt and what looked like hospital scrub pants smeared with dirt and blood. "Can you walk? The only shower is upstairs, and it's a pretty weak one, but it's better than nothing..."

He trailed off. Dean stared at him for several moments, then nodded and unfolded his legs. He was barefoot, and there was a ring of bruises and scars around one of his ankles.

A shackle, Sam realized. They'd kept him chained up, and he'd fought against it, tried to get free. Over and over again, if the layering of wounds and scars that Sam could see were any indication.

Dean stood up and Sam stepped back, aware that he'd been staring again. Dean swayed unsteadily, but when Sam reached out to help him, he jerked away.

"Sorry," Sam said automatically. "I won't -- okay. Upstairs, then. It's, um, it's this way."

He led Dean up to the bathroom, looking over his shoulder every few steps to make sure Dean was managing. He moved carefully, like an old man afraid of taking a wrong step, and he was winded when they reached the top of the steps, but Sam didn't try to help him again.

Sam showed him into the bathroom. "There's, um, towels and... and I'll get you some clothes. Just a sec."

When he came back from the bedroom, Dean was standing at the bathroom sink, looking at himself in the mirror, running one hand over his face as though the lines were unfamiliar to him.

Sam set the clothes on the counter. "I have bandages too," he said, gesturing at Dean's bare arms. Some of the smaller cuts were still seeping blood where the scabs had broken, but none of them looked too serious. "After you get out we can clean them up," Sam said. "Just -- just let me know if you need anything, okay?"

Sam backed into the hallway, and Dean began to close the door. Just before clicking it shut, Dean pulled it open again. "Sam."

His heart jumped at the sound of Dean saying his name. "Yeah?"

"That's your name?"

"Yeah," Sam replied, nodding. "I'm Sam."

"And my... what's..." He didn't look at Sam as he spoke; he was gripping the edge of the sink, his knuckles white even against his pale skin.

"Dean. You're Dean," Sam told him softly.

"What's our last name?"

"Winchester."

"Like the gun?"

"Yeah," Sam said with a small laugh. "Like the gun."

Dean started to close the door again, but through a crack of just a few inches Sam heard him speak again. "You're not like them. They didn't let us have names," he said in a rush. He shut the door firmly and turned the lock.

Sam leaned against the wall in the hallway, eyes closed, until he heard the shower turn on and the curtain rattle on the rod. Then he exhaled slowly and went back downstairs, his feet heavy on the steps, thinking over what Sangeeta had said to him. _This wouldn't be the first time something evil tried to use him against you._ Demons whispering into his ear, spirits implanting images in his mind, promises and taunts -- we know where he is, we know how he's suffering, we can hear him screaming, just like Daddy, are you going to abandon him just like Daddy? -- so many voices over so many months, every one of them doing what evil did best: telling him exactly what he wanted to hear.

It was bad enough hunting without Dean, without the other half he'd always trusted to be there, without Dean watching his back or heading into the darkness first. It was like learning how to fight with only one arm or run with only one leg, and to have it thrown back at him every time he let down his guard, every time he let something in -- eventually, he'd learned to shut them all out. Close his mind and ignore their voices, cover up their promises with the mantra of his own: _Dean's dead, he's gone, he's not coming back. Dead. Gone._

They'd all been wrong, Sam and the demons.

Sam went into the living room and sat on the couch, shoved Daisy aside and opened his laptop. The story had made the national news: a tragic Christmas Eve fire at a farm outside Terre Haute, allegedly connected to a small religious cult, cause of the blaze yet unknown. Authorities were considering the possibility of arson or mass suicide. Some survivors had been dropped off by unknown persons at a local hospital, but they had not yet provided the police with any information. The Indiana State Police were working in conjunction with neighboring states to locate members of the group who might have fled. The city was shocked. The investigation was proceeding.

Everything Sam found in the news reports confirmed what Lenore had told him. He leaned back and tapped the keyboard, listening to the sound of the shower still running upstairs. He opened a new window and searched for "Brethren of the Wine of Eternal Life," and he found what he was looking for immediately. The site looked innocent enough: amateur design, annoying colors, a lot of quasi-religious quotations and photographs of people smiling in a bucolic farm setting. He followed the link to "About Our Founders," and that's where he found them. They were brother and sister, apparently. Enoch and Emmanueline Smith.

Sam leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and studying the pictures. Sister Emmanueline looked like a kind old schoolteacher, plump and smiling with gray hair pulled into a bun and a brown knitted cardigan over her shoulders. Enoch was a soft old man with a white beard and a knowing smile, nothing like the madman leader of a cult that kept people chained up on its farm for the purpose of drinking their blood. But that, Sam knew, was probably the point. The more innocent the man looked, the easier it would be for him to slip away. If what Lenore said was correct and Father Enoch was able to manipulate minds, it wouldn't matter how hard the police looked or if they ever found him.

Sam stared at the man's picture for a long time, part of his mind aware that his jaw was clenched and his neck was aching from the effort of not hurling the laptop across the room in fury. Father Enoch looked so harmless, kind and a little funny, like somebody's eccentric grandfather who carried peppermints in his pockets.

Sam had never wanted to kill somebody so much in his life.

Shoving the thought into the back of his mind, Sam scoured the rest of the cult's website, but he found nothing to indicate whether they had another base of operations besides the destroyed farm in Indiana. There were dozens of pictures, however, and a handful of names, so he went through and carefully saved each page on the site, just in case it disappeared. He emailed the link to Ash with the request, "Find out everything you can about it," and he went back to searching. The group's website wasn't the only hit that had come up; there were also a handful of reports on sites offering information and help to families of cult members. Sam read a few of them quickly but nothing obviously useful jumped out at him.

When he heard the footsteps on the creaking stairs, he jumped in surprise and realized that he hadn't heard the water running for several minutes. He snapped the laptop closed and stood up.

Dean came down the steps, holding onto the railing, and peering cautiously into the living room as though it had been more than twenty minutes since he'd last seen it. His hair was damp, there were Band-Aids stuck on some of the cuts on his arms, and he was wearing the clothes Sam had given him, a blue t-shirt with a dog on it and old sweats that seemed huge on his thin body. He'd shaved, too, accentuating the hollows of his checks and sharpness of his bones.

"Food," Sam blurted, inwardly cursing himself for forgetting. "You should eat something. I have -- well, I don't have much, but I think I can manage some soup."

In the kitchen he waved Dean into a chair and began searching through the cabinets. He found a can of soup and set a pot on the stove, and began rattling through the drawers to find the can opener. "My friend Sangeeta, she's the doctor I called earlier," he said as he searched, not looking at Dean, "she said that it might help if you go over what you remember." He found the can opener and fiddled with it nervously. "Do you remember anything? About... anything?"

Dean didn't answer. He looked like a wild animal poised for flight, his eyes wide and every muscle tense.

Sam sighed and went back to the soup. "Okay. Okay," he said, trying to hide his impatience. "It's okay."

So that wasn't going to work; he had to try something else. He thought about talking to scared witnesses on hunts, how he'd always tried so hard to seem open and trustworthy, made an art out of it because Dean was so hopeless around people. Except -- Sam frowned slightly as he dumped the soup into the pan and added water. Except for kids. When it came to scared little kids, Dean was the one who always did the talking. He had a knack for it, a calm, reassuring demeanor Sam had never quite got the hang of.

"It's okay," he said again, keeping his voice casual. "You don't want to talk. I understand. You don't have any reason to trust me -- for all you know, I'm a complete stranger, and you just got dumped on my doorstep with no reason or explanation. And, hell, I've known you my entire life, more than long enough to know that you're a suspicious son of a bitch under the best circumstances." He paused, stirring the soup and thinking about where to go next. "So how about I tell you what I know?"

Dean still said nothing.

"You've been gone for two years," Sam went on. He hesitated while the soup heated up, thinking of how best to explain it. "Almost exactly. You died -- I mean, you disappeared on Christmas Eve, and today's Christmas Day. We were investigating the disappearance of this family in Effingham, Illinois. Mom, dad, and kids, all up and vanished without a trace."

Hesitantly, Dean asked, "Investigating?"

"Oh, god." Sam caught himself before he went on. "This is -- right. So, our lives. Shit. I don't know how to explain this." The soup began bubbling, and he switched off the stove and poured it into a bowl. He found a spoon and carried the soup over to the table, set it down before Dean and pulled out another chair. "That's... well, that's what we did. It was the family business: investigating strange reports, mysterious deaths, anything that looked like it couldn't be explained by... in a regular way." Shaking his head, Sam laughed a little and shrugged. "Our lives were pretty weird."

"That girl--"

When Dean didn't go on, he prompted, "Yeah?"

"Who brought me here."

"Lenore?"

"She's... a vampire?" There didn't seem to be any fear in Dean's question.

"Yeah, she is, but -- well, she and her friends don't kill people." Sam remembered that Lenore had, quite possibly, killed at least one person right in front of Dean at the farm, and he added lamely, "For food."

"But the people..." Dean stopped and looked around anxiously, like he wasn't certain they were the only two in the house. "They -- they took blood, to drink."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "They did."

Dean picked up his spoon and stirred his soup for a moment, the metal scraping along the inside the bowl. "That is pretty weird," he said, glancing up so quickly Sam nearly missed it.

For one stunned second, Sam didn't react, then he felt his face split into a wide smile. "It really is you, isn't it?" he said, his voice hoarse and his throat suddenly tight.

Dean didn't answer. He stirred the soup again, staring into the bowl like he expected it to jump out and grab him, and took one tentative bite.

Leaning back in his chair, Sam felt his smile fade. "Anyway. Two years ago, we were investigating this disappearance in Illinois and you... they took you. It was a trap. We were poking around in the house when it just... just went up flames. I don't even know how the fire started--"

Dean flinched at the word _fire_, but he continued to eat.

"--but it was pretty bad, and you fell through the floor and... I guess they grabbed you and put somebody else's body in your place. After the fire -- there were only bones left. I didn't know it wasn't you." Sam leaned forward and said again, "I didn't know, Dean. I swear to god, I didn't know you were still alive. I'm so sorry, I didn't know they had taken you, I thought you were dead, or I would have found you, I swear, I wouldn't have let them--"

"It was dark."

Sam stopped, his mouth open. "What?"

"It was dark, most of the time" Dean said again. He was still holding his spoon but he'd stopped eating. "The place where they kept us."

Scarcely daring to breathe, Sam waited.

"Do not speak, do not fight, do not lie," Dean went on, his voice taking on an eerie sing-song tone. "Do not speak, do not fight, do not--" He stopped abruptly and all emotion vanished from his voice. "I was -- I remember waiting. For someone to come."

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Dean sipped the soup from the spoon. Then his expression twisted suddenly and he dropped the spoon and bolted to his feet, knocking the chair back with a loud clatter. He stumbled toward the sink, but he wasn't fast enough and promptly vomited up all of the soup and water.

Sam jumped up as Dean took a few wavering steps backward and sunk to the floor, pale and trembling. "Dean? Hey, are you--"

He crouched beside Dean and reached out to help him, but Dean jerked away from his touch with a whimper of fear and slid backwards across the kitchen floor.

"Dean. Dean, I won't hurt you." Sam bit down on his panic and held up both hands. "I'm not going to hurt you. I -- I just want to make sure you're okay."

Dean reached the kitchen wall and stopped, collapsing back against it like all of his energy had drained away.

"You must feel pretty rotten," Sam went on. Dean looked exhausted; his eyes were still alert but with effort, and there was a sheen of sweat over his skin. Sam mentally kicked himself for not paying closer attention. He moved forward, pausing when Dean flinched. "Do you want to get some rest?"

Dean didn't reply, and Sam waited. The kitchen suddenly felt oppressive, no sounds except the wind howling outside and Dean's ragged breathing, sour with the smell of vomit and cold on the hardwood floor.

After a few minutes, Sam stood slowly and held out his hand. "I won't hurt you," he said. "I'll just help you get upstairs -- the bed up there is more comfortable than the couch, and you can rest until you feel better, okay?"

Another minute passed, and Sam began to think that Dean wasn't going to move, maybe hadn't heard him at all. But Dean reached up hesitantly and let Sam take his hand. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch, and when Sam helped him up he clutched at Sam's arm for balance. Sam let him cling as they went upstairs, resisting the urge to gather Dean into his arms, carry him or hold him, anything more than the bony, fearful, vise-like grip.

At the top of the stairs, he deposited Dean in the bathroom again, digging up an unopened toothbrush for him and leaving him only when he was sure Dean wouldn't topple over and hit his head. He went into his bedroom and quickly straightened the covers on bed, fluffed the pillows and turned up the thermostat.

When he turned around, Dean was standing in the doorway, holding on to the frame.

"It's cold in here," Sam said apologetically. "I turned up the heat, but -- here, take this." He grabbed one of his hooded sweatshirts from the pile of clean laundry by the closet and handed it to Dean. "It'll warm up soon."

Dean slipped the sweatshirt over his head and walked forward hesitantly when Sam gestured at the bed. He climbed in without protest and let Sam tuck the covers around him, watching Sam with tired, wary eyes.

"Get some rest," Sam said quietly. "I'll be right downstairs. You're safe here, Dean."

Dean didn't reply, and Sam only sighed as he left the room.

He sat down at the top of the stairs and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly, evenly. He waited, but he heard no sounds from within the bedroom. Dean didn't say anything, didn't climb out of the bed, didn't call out for him.

After several minutes, Sam stood up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and went downstairs to clean up.


	3. Chapter 3

It was only mid-afternoon, but the blizzard made the day dark and claustrophobic. The house was wrapped in a blanket of whirling snow; when Sam looked outside he couldn't see the neighbor's house or the end of the driveway, and even the barn was no more than a dark smudge beside the house.

He cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, taking time to scrub the floor and load the dishwasher, feed the wood stove and bring in more logs from the stack outside. He put the soiled towels in the washer and started it up, half-listening to the steady chug as he went about gathering his books and notebooks into neat stacks, collecting his unopened mail into a pile on the counter, folding the quilt on the sofa and straightening the coffee table.

When the kitchen and living room were as ordered as he could make them without breaking out the bucket and mop, Sam filled a glass with water crept quietly up the stairs. Dean was fast asleep, his breathing steady and his expression relaxed. Daisy was curled up beside him on the pillow, her chin resting on his shoulder. She opened one eye when Sam set the glass on the nightstand, twitched her ear, and went back to sleep. The room was still chilly, so Sam notched the thermostat up another few degrees.

He turned to leave, then stopped and leaned in the doorway, watching Dean sleep. Tucked safely in bed, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open, he looked so much like the brother Sam remembered that Sam felt a wave of strange, giddy excitement. Pale, thin, beat to hell, sure, but Dean looked like he could stir any moment, wake with that typical grunt of protest and rub his eyes, bitch at Sam for not bringing him coffee and complain about the lumpy mattress. He'd wake the way he'd woken up thousands of times over the years, in so many motel rooms, on so many mornings dotted through Sam's memory, so familiar and comfortable that he hadn't realized how much he counted on it until Dean was gone and he began waking up to an empty room and silence.

But Sam let Dean sleep. He went downstairs and found his cell phone, sat down at the kitchen table and called Ellen.

The phone rang several times before she answered. "Hello?"

"Ellen. It's Sam again."

"You change your mind about coming by? We're about to sit down to eat--"

"No, it's something else," he said. He swallowed hard; his throat was dry.

"Sam, what is it?" Her voice sharpened, that sixth sense for trouble that Sam suspected all mothers possessed switching on. "Did something happen?"

"It's Dean."

"Oh, honey--"

"He's here. He's alive."

Quickly, stumbling over the words, he told her the entire story. She interrupted only a few times to ask questions, and when he finished there was a brief silence.

"You're sure it's him?" she asked.

"Yes," Sam said. "I'm sure."

Another pause.

"Good enough for me." She cleared her throat. "I can be there in two hours -- no, better make it three, with the snow."

"No, you don't -- Ellen, you don't have to do that," Sam said. He thought of her storming into the cold, quiet house, a whirlwind of warmth and activity and good sense, ordering him around in that no-nonsense tone and taking control. He sighed, and went on, "It's too dangerous to drive in this storm. I'm okay, I just wanted..."

"Where is Dean now?" Ellen asked when he didn't go on.

"Asleep. He's -- god, he's so scared and hurt and I want to do something to help him, I just want -- I don't know, he's so _scared_, but everything I do just makes it worse--"

"Sweetie, I don't have to be there to know that ain't true," she interrupted with a mixture of concern and amusement. "I've never met two boys better at taking care of each other than you and your brother, and he might not know that right now, but _you_ do. Now, I don't know much about situations like this, but it seems to me it's a good sign that he's willing to eat your food and talk to you and sleep in your bed."

Sam exhaled shakily. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I'm sorry. I'm just--"

"Don't apologize, kiddo. You've had a hell of a day. Are you sure you don't want some help tonight? Little bit of snow doesn't bother me."

"It's okay. We'll be okay," Sam said. Then he added, hesitantly, "But... maybe tomorrow?"

"Bright and early. Have the coffee on about nine o'clock." Ellen paused, and when she went on her voice was quieter. "Well, this sure as hell wasn't news I was expecting to hear today."

"Yeah," Sam laughed. "Tell me about it." He hesitated, unwilling to disrupt the feeling of reassurance, then said, "There's something else... I want to ask. A favor."

"The rest of the cult," Ellen guessed.

"I don't know if anybody... I was just thinking, you have a lot of people around today, maybe you could put out some feelers..." He waited, but she said nothing so he went on, "It's all over the news, so it's not like anybody would have to know the details."

"Sam," Ellen began, "not that I'm disagreeing with you, but--"

"I'm not going to do anything now," Sam said quickly. "I'm not -- I'm not going to run off half-cocked on some mission for revenge, Ellen, not while Dean needs help. I just... I just don't want the trail to go cold."

"Okay," she said. It seemed as though she was going to add something more, but she only said, "I'll put the word out that I'm interested in whatever folks hear."

"Thanks, Ellen."

"I'll see you tomorrow, Sam," she said. "Take care of yourself, too, okay? You sound beat."

Stifling a yawn as he hung up, Sam realized she was right. He'd hardly slept the night before, and with the initial rush and shock of the morning fading, he could feel it catching up to him. He tried to resist, thinking that there was so much more he should be doing, but exhaustion fell over him like a heavy blanket.

He thought about curling up on the couch for a while but went upstairs instead, took a blanket from the closet and headed into the bedroom. There was a chair in the corner, a ratty old thing he usually used as a place to pile clothes. He cleared it off in one sweep and pulled it closer to the bed. The legs scraped loudly on the wooden floor, but Dean didn't stir. He and Daisy were both sound asleep.

Sam settled into the chair and pulled the blanket up to his chin. It was getting darker outside, and the blizzard hadn't slackened. Sam stretched his legs before him and let his eyes fall shut, listening to Dean's quiet breathing under the constant howl of the wind outside.

The click of the lamp switch woke him sometime later.

Sam rubbed his eyes and sat upright. It was completely dark outside, and Dean was sitting up, his hand on the bedside lamp, blinking in the light.

"Hey," Sam said through a yawn, "how're you feeling?"

Dean made a small motion that might have been a shrug. He picked up the glass of water Sam had left on the nightstand and drained it in a few gulps. Sam stood and stepped over to take it from him, saying, "I'll get you some more. Do you want to try something to eat too? Maybe toast?"

Hesitantly, Dean nodded, pushing back the covers and cleared his throat. "Downstairs?"

"No, stay here. I'll get it."

Downstairs was cold and dark. Sam switched on the kitchen light, stoked the fire in the wood stove and closed all the curtains. In the dark panes of the windows he could see only his own reflection and dizzy snowflakes a few inches away, nothing of the world beyond. He stood at the front window for nearly a minute, hoping to catch some glimpse of headlights on the road or the light in the neighbor's window, but there was nothing except wind and snow.

Shivering suddenly, Sam returned to the kitchen, filled up Dean's glass with water and found some bread in the fridge. Why's it always have to be toast? Dean had asked once, a few years ago when he was hit with a nasty flu bug and they were holed up in Minnesota during a dreary February. It's not like toast is special. Toast doesn't have magical medicinal powers.

No, Sam had replied as the toaster oven dinged, toast has magical shut-up powers. If you don't shut up, it magically vanishes before you can eat it.

Sam jumped when the toaster popped, and as he climbed the stairs again the clock on the fireplace mantle began to chime. Seven in the evening on Christmas Day, the first real blizzard of winter raging outside, and they might as well have been the only two people in the world, the only bright spot on a dark, windswept landscape.

"Here, I brought you some--" Sam stopped in the doorway.

Dean was sitting cross-legged on the bed, holding the two small picture frames Sam kept by his bedside.

"Oh," Sam said. He set the toast and water down, sat on the edge of the bed. Dean shifted slightly to give him more room, but he didn't flinch away this time, and Sam felt a small trill of hope in spite of the tightness in his chest. "This one," he said, pointing at the larger of the two wooden frames, "that's our family. Mom, Dad, you and me. I was only about three months old, I guess. We lived in Kansas then."

Dean touched the glass over the photograph softly, brushing his fingertips over their mother's face, then their father's.

"They're dead, aren't they."

Sam felt a lurch of surprise. "You remember that?"

Dean shrugged, neither a yes nor a no. "You would have mentioned them before."

Trying to hide his disappointment, Sam said, "Yes, they're both dead. Mom died when I was still a baby, just a few months after that picture was taken. Dad died about five years ago. Mary and John. Those were their names."

Dean set that picture frame aside, his eyes lingering on it for a moment before turning his attention to the other one. The second was a smaller photo, a faded three-by-five snapshot washed with too much sunlight. It showed two boys on an ordinary neighborhood sidewalk, the little one perched on a dirt bike with an expression of mingled fear and exhilaration, the older one nearly doubled over laughing but still firmly holding the back of the seat.

"Dad took that picture. You were teaching me to ride," Sam explained, smiling at the memory. "I was so scared -- not that I admitted it, but you knew anyway, and you kept making up all these stories about the times riding a bike had let you escape from being caught by spies and jewel thieves and FBI agents and zombies." He thought about it for a second and added, "Actually, I think the zombie one might have been true. But you kept telling me these wild stories, and they kept getting crazier and more absurd, and I was so caught up in listening and trying to guess which ones were lies that I didn't even notice when you let go of the seat and were just running alongside me. It was--"

Sam cleared his throat and blinked rapidly. Dean wasn't looking at the photograph anymore; he was studying Sam's face, his expression inscrutable.

"It was fun," Sam said quietly. "After I got the hang of it you double-dared me to ride through Mrs. Cooper's sprinklers, and of course I had to take the dare. The bike slipped and I ended up with a face full of grass, Mrs. Cooper must've seen me through the window, because she came out of her house screaming like a banshee and waving a broom at us, but she'd -- she was a little senile, I guess, though we thought she was crazy, and she'd forgotten to put her pants on. So there she was, standing in the middle of the sprinklers on her front lawn, wearing nothing but this huge purple shirt and waving a broom at a stupid little kid soaked to the bone with grass stuck all over him. I wanted to cry but you and Dad--" Sam swallowed and sniffed, shook his head in amusement. "You and Dad were both laughing so hard you could hardly breathe, so I started laughing too, and when Dad came over to apologize to Mrs. Cooper she chased both of us away with her broom. It was a good day."

Glancing down at the photograph, Dean set it beside the other on the nightstand and picked up his glass of water. Staring at Sam intently, he took a slow drink but said nothing.

"I know you don't remember," Sam said, looking down to avoid that intense green gaze that was both too strange and too familiar, "but you were -- you _are_ \-- a good brother. The best. Much better than I ever deserved."

Still, Dean didn't answer.

Sam stood up. "I'll let you eat," he said, looking at the toast and glass of water and comforter and lamp, anywhere but at Dean and the photographs. "I'll, um, I'll be downstairs. If you need anything."

He hurried downstairs, shoving his thoughts aside and looking for something to do with his hands, something to occupy his mind. The living room fire was out; Sam started rebuilding it, stirring the faint embers with the iron poker and breaking kindling. His hands were shaking so badly he dropped two matches before he got a new flame going. He put a couple more logs on and backed away when the flames caught, stepped around the coffee table and sunk onto the couch. The quilt was still there, folded nearly over the back, and he tugged it over himself and tried to stop shivering.

It would get better, he told himself. He had never known anybody as strong as Dean, anybody so willing to stare into the face of the greatest evil and laugh, to walk into the darkest, deadliest places and crack jokes about the décor, to stand outnumbered and outgunned and outmaneuvered and still go down fighting. Dean was still there, beneath that shell of fear and silence. It _would_ get better.

Sam took a shaky breath and rubbed his hands over his face. This was just another monster to beat. A nasty son of a bitch, ugly and relentless, a monster that had pulled them apart and broken one of them down--

But not both of them.

The wind whistled around the house, and Sam tucked the quilt tighter around himself. Prairie ghosts, Dad's friend Joshua used to call it, so many folks got lost or killed or forgotten on the prairie the wind picked up their voices and kept them, carried them through summer tornadoes and spring thunderstorm, autumn gales and winter blizzards. Sam remembered when he was a kid, lying awake nights at Joshua's house and listening to the wind outside, trying to make out the individual voices, sad and worried that he could never understand what they were saying.

The storm wouldn't keep Ellen away. Nothing short of a great lava-filled chasm splitting the earth between here and the roadhouse would keep Ellen away. Sam leaned back against the back of the couch, thinking through plans for tomorrow. Sangeeta and her husband Noah would come by early; Noah had a plow blade on his pickup and he could clear the driveway, open a path and let the world in. Sangeeta would look over Dean, tell Sam what she knew and what he needed to do, her voice quick and sharp with instructions and advice, raising her thin eyebrows with amusement when she noticed Sam taking notes.

And Ellen might have names, numbers he could call and people he could find, when he was ready. He thought of her network of contacts spreading out across the map, a continent-spanning web centered on the roadhouse, marked by faint lights and deep shadows. Somewhere a man with a friendly smile and a thirst for blood was hiding; somewhere else a pretty vampire was trying to find a new home for her family. There might be police in Indiana who would find fingerprints among ashes; there might be new followers and new captives, new shackles and new darkness. There might be nothing but confusion and fear lying in his bed upstairs, warm in his clothes and eating dry toast, wearing his brother's face like a mask.

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. Unanswered questions stretched before him like an unfamiliar road, blotted with landmarks he didn't recognize and signs he couldn't read. The world had never seemed so big as it did when the only things that mattered at all were tucked away in a borrowed Nebraska farmhouse.

There was a creak on the steps, and his eyes snapped open. A few quiet footsteps, bare feet padding on hardwood, and Sam twisted around to see Dean come into the living room. He stood at the end of the couch for a few moments, looking down at Sam, his face all shadows and sharp lines in the flickering firelight.

"They told us--" Dean swayed and reached out one hand to steady himself. "They told me nobody would come, because nobody would remember."

Sam moved slightly to one side, pulling the quilt with him, and gestured for Dean to sit down. He did, cautiously, as though it hurt to make sudden motions, and he stared at the fire when he went on.

"I thought -- I wanted... they were always lying." He licked his lips nervously and shivered, rubbing his arms through the fabric of Sam's hooded sweatshirt. "But after -- it was easier to -- to believe them."

Slowly, Sam pulled the quilt off himself and leaned over, started to fold it over Dean. Dean jerked in surprise, but when he took his gaze away from the fire to look at Sam he didn't try to move away. He let Sam tuck the quilt around him, watching in silence until Sam sat back again.

"I remember promising to take care of you," Dean said.

Sam's heart leapt into his throat. "Dean--"

"There isn't -- there's nothing else," Dean said, his voice calm and strangely curious. "But it must have been important, for me to remember that, right?"

The back of his throat burning, his hands shaking, Sam reached out. He put his hand on Dean's shoulder and, when Dean didn't flinch away, pulled him close into a hug. Dean went tense and very still, but after a few seconds he began to relax.

"God, I missed you," Sam whispered. "I missed you so much."

He let go of Dean quickly, kissed the top of his head and leaned back into the sofa, keeping one arm around Dean's shoulders. In the firelight, Dean was watching him with a wary expression, but most of the fear was gone.

"There is--"

"Yeah?" Sam wiped his eyes and waited.

"One other thing," Dean went on, his brow wrinkled in concentration. "A car?"

Sam stared at him for several seconds, then he began to laugh, a strangled, slightly crazy sound that made Dean widen his eyes in alarm.

"I can't believe you remember your car, but you don't remember me," Sam said, still laughing. "That figures. I always knew you loved her best."

"Her?" Dean asked uncertainly. Sam thought it might be a trick of the firelight or his blurred vision, but he thought he saw a flicker of amusement on Dean's face.

"Don't worry," he said, squeezing Dean's shoulder. "I took good care of her for you. You told me once you would come back and haunt my ass if I didn't."

"Oh."

"You'll remember," Sam said gently. "You'll remember, and before long you'll be making fun of me for crying like a girl and yelling at me for keeping your beloved car in the barn. I know you will."

And in the warm glow of the fire, his arm around Dean's shoulders and the winter wind trapped safely outside, Sam believed it.


End file.
